🎬 The Birth of a Lie: How Cinema Learned to Deceive
https://jscenter.ir/jews-and-the-media/jews-and-hollywood/20758
On the anniversary of cinema's creation, a look at its powerful—and often dark—potential.
The story of cinema is not just one of art and entertainment, but also of mass persuasion and historical forgery. A pivotal figure in unlocking this potential was John Ford, a legend whose career began with one of the most controversial films ever made.
🎞️ The Apprenticeship: "The Birth of a Nation" (1915)
Ford's breakthrough came with an honorary role in D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation." This film was a landmark in cinematic technique but also one of the most racist films in Hollywood history.
· It glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed Black Americans as dangerous and inferior.
· It was a custom-ordered project, produced with the material and moral support of the Democratic Party and President Woodrow Wilson.
· Most importantly, it proved that cinema was not just an art or industry, but a powerful media tool capable of shaping beliefs, distorting history, and speaking to the masses through light, movement, and, later, sound.
For the young John Ford (then Jack Ford), this film was a masterclass. It showed him cinema's immense capacity for "lying" and especially for "forging history."
🤠 The Rise of a Mythmaker
Ford quickly understood the power and wealth equations in American cinema, then dominated by a influential Jewish community. He collaborated with pioneers like Thomas Edison and rose to direct 60 silent films in his first decade.
His key insights shaped his legendary career:
1. Embracing Sound (1929): He recognized the decline of silent film and the new power of "sound" to make media lies more believable.
2. Embracing Color (1939): He soon adopted Technicolor, further enhancing cinema's persuasive realism.
3. Mastering the Western: He became synonymous with the Western genre, which he used to its full potential. The Western, born from liberalist thought, has a unique ability to fabricate truths and create reality from falsehoods, pushing the media goals of the liberal system.
🏆 The "Soft Power Officer"
John Ford can be seen as a prime example of a "soft power officer."
· He directed a record 112 feature films, making him the most prolific director in world cinema.
· He won a record four Academy Awards for Best Director (The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man).
· He influenced giants like Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg.
His legacy is the full realization of cinema's triple function: not just as art or industry, but as a supremely effective mass media tool for storytelling and, as he learned early on, for strategic deception.
Source: Jewish Studies Center - "The Birth of a Nation and John Ford; Discovering Cinema's Capacity for Lying"
#CinemaHistory #Hollywood #JohnFord #Propaganda #MediaStudies #FilmAnalysis #TheBirthOfANation
✅ @rahyafte_en
https://jscenter.ir/jews-and-the-media/jews-and-hollywood/20758
On the anniversary of cinema's creation, a look at its powerful—and often dark—potential.
The story of cinema is not just one of art and entertainment, but also of mass persuasion and historical forgery. A pivotal figure in unlocking this potential was John Ford, a legend whose career began with one of the most controversial films ever made.
🎞️ The Apprenticeship: "The Birth of a Nation" (1915)
Ford's breakthrough came with an honorary role in D.W. Griffith's "The Birth of a Nation." This film was a landmark in cinematic technique but also one of the most racist films in Hollywood history.
· It glorified the Ku Klux Klan and portrayed Black Americans as dangerous and inferior.
· It was a custom-ordered project, produced with the material and moral support of the Democratic Party and President Woodrow Wilson.
· Most importantly, it proved that cinema was not just an art or industry, but a powerful media tool capable of shaping beliefs, distorting history, and speaking to the masses through light, movement, and, later, sound.
For the young John Ford (then Jack Ford), this film was a masterclass. It showed him cinema's immense capacity for "lying" and especially for "forging history."
🤠 The Rise of a Mythmaker
Ford quickly understood the power and wealth equations in American cinema, then dominated by a influential Jewish community. He collaborated with pioneers like Thomas Edison and rose to direct 60 silent films in his first decade.
His key insights shaped his legendary career:
1. Embracing Sound (1929): He recognized the decline of silent film and the new power of "sound" to make media lies more believable.
2. Embracing Color (1939): He soon adopted Technicolor, further enhancing cinema's persuasive realism.
3. Mastering the Western: He became synonymous with the Western genre, which he used to its full potential. The Western, born from liberalist thought, has a unique ability to fabricate truths and create reality from falsehoods, pushing the media goals of the liberal system.
🏆 The "Soft Power Officer"
John Ford can be seen as a prime example of a "soft power officer."
· He directed a record 112 feature films, making him the most prolific director in world cinema.
· He won a record four Academy Awards for Best Director (The Informer, The Grapes of Wrath, How Green Was My Valley, The Quiet Man).
· He influenced giants like Orson Welles, Ingmar Bergman, Martin Scorsese, and Steven Spielberg.
His legacy is the full realization of cinema's triple function: not just as art or industry, but as a supremely effective mass media tool for storytelling and, as he learned early on, for strategic deception.
Source: Jewish Studies Center - "The Birth of a Nation and John Ford; Discovering Cinema's Capacity for Lying"
#CinemaHistory #Hollywood #JohnFord #Propaganda #MediaStudies #FilmAnalysis #TheBirthOfANation
✅ @rahyafte_en
اندیشکده مطالعات یهود | Jewish Studies Center
«تولد یک ملت» و «جان فورد»؛ کشف ظرفیت سینما در دروغگویی - اندیشکده مطالعات یهود | Jewish Studies Center
جان فورد را باید یک «افسر جنگ نرم» دانست. او نقش بیبدیلی در تثبیت «ژانر وسترن» ایفا کرد که قابلیت گستردهای برای «جعل حقایق» دارد!
🎬 The Cold War's Grip on Iranian and World Cinema
https://jscenter.ir/jews-and-the-media/jews-and-hollywood/9715
On the occasion of the screening of "#Abi_va_Rabi" – Iran's first silent feature film, shown at Mayak Cinema (Dec 30, 1930):
The post-World War II era saw the world divided into a bipolar order, with the Soviet Union and the United States as rival superpowers. While they never engaged in direct military conflict, their global rivalry—known as the Cold War—lasted 45 years and reshaped international relations.
The term "Cold War" itself was first used by an American Jewish politician, Bernard Baruch.
🎥 Cinema as the Main Battlefield
This period proved that the primary arena of superpower conflict was not direct warfare, but the realm of "Soft Conflict" – a battle for hearts and minds. Cinema became the ultimate weapon in this struggle.
· In the Eastern Bloc, Vladimir Lenin declared, "For us, cinema is the most important art," and put his wife in charge of Soviet film. The state used it for socialist propaganda in films like Battleship Potemkin and Solaris.
· In the Western Bloc, Hollywood took the lead. It projected American myths, lifestyle, and liberal values worldwide, constantly strengthening its media power to win the ideological war.
Historical analysis suggests that many regional wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea) and crises (Berlin Wall, Suez) during this time were, in essence, proxy battles and tools for these superpowers to expand their global influence through media and propaganda dominance.
🇮🇷 The Lost Path of Iranian Cinema
While the world was engaged in this cultural-ideological war, the Iranian film industry, which began in 1904, took a passive and directionless path.
· For its first 26 years, Iranian screens were dominated by foreign films from America, France, Germany, the USSR, and Egypt.
· When Iran finally produced its first silent film, Abi and Rabi (1930), and later its first talkie, The Lor Girl (1934), it did so without a clear intellectual direction or regard for the profound global transformations.
· Instead of addressing national concerns or the impact of World Wars, Iranian cinema under the Pahlavi regime became a tool for Western cultural infiltration. It focused on shallow entertainment, romantic melodramas, and gradually morphed into the infamous "Film Farsi" genre.
🍿 The "Film Farsi" Phenomenon
By the 1960s, Iranian cinema had crystallized into "Film Farsi," a unique hybrid that mixed shallow Hollywood and Bollywood storytelling techniques. Its hallmarks became:
· Sensationalism (sex, alcohol, cabaret dancing)
· Violence (fistfights)
· Shallow plots centered on trivial relationships
· A growing emphasis on indecency and breaking social norms
The peak was the massive commercial success of films like Ganj-e Qarun (1965), a copy of Indian melodramas. However, by the early 1970s, the Iranian society began to reject this culture of "distraction" and moral decay that Film Farsi promoted.
The Cold War era starkly revealed cinema's power: it could dismantle cultures or help civilizations rise. While the superpowers wielded it as a strategic weapon, pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, unfortunately, became a vehicle for cultural alienation and lost identity.
Source: Jewish Studies Center - "The Reign of the Cold War in Iranian and World Cinema"
Author: Dr. Musa Ismailnejad
#ColdWar #IranianCinema #FilmHistory #Hollywood #Propaganda #FilmFarsi #AbiAndRabi #SoftPower #MediaStudies
✅ @rahyafte_en
https://jscenter.ir/jews-and-the-media/jews-and-hollywood/9715
On the occasion of the screening of "#Abi_va_Rabi" – Iran's first silent feature film, shown at Mayak Cinema (Dec 30, 1930):
The post-World War II era saw the world divided into a bipolar order, with the Soviet Union and the United States as rival superpowers. While they never engaged in direct military conflict, their global rivalry—known as the Cold War—lasted 45 years and reshaped international relations.
The term "Cold War" itself was first used by an American Jewish politician, Bernard Baruch.
🎥 Cinema as the Main Battlefield
This period proved that the primary arena of superpower conflict was not direct warfare, but the realm of "Soft Conflict" – a battle for hearts and minds. Cinema became the ultimate weapon in this struggle.
· In the Eastern Bloc, Vladimir Lenin declared, "For us, cinema is the most important art," and put his wife in charge of Soviet film. The state used it for socialist propaganda in films like Battleship Potemkin and Solaris.
· In the Western Bloc, Hollywood took the lead. It projected American myths, lifestyle, and liberal values worldwide, constantly strengthening its media power to win the ideological war.
Historical analysis suggests that many regional wars (Vietnam, Afghanistan, Korea) and crises (Berlin Wall, Suez) during this time were, in essence, proxy battles and tools for these superpowers to expand their global influence through media and propaganda dominance.
🇮🇷 The Lost Path of Iranian Cinema
While the world was engaged in this cultural-ideological war, the Iranian film industry, which began in 1904, took a passive and directionless path.
· For its first 26 years, Iranian screens were dominated by foreign films from America, France, Germany, the USSR, and Egypt.
· When Iran finally produced its first silent film, Abi and Rabi (1930), and later its first talkie, The Lor Girl (1934), it did so without a clear intellectual direction or regard for the profound global transformations.
· Instead of addressing national concerns or the impact of World Wars, Iranian cinema under the Pahlavi regime became a tool for Western cultural infiltration. It focused on shallow entertainment, romantic melodramas, and gradually morphed into the infamous "Film Farsi" genre.
🍿 The "Film Farsi" Phenomenon
By the 1960s, Iranian cinema had crystallized into "Film Farsi," a unique hybrid that mixed shallow Hollywood and Bollywood storytelling techniques. Its hallmarks became:
· Sensationalism (sex, alcohol, cabaret dancing)
· Violence (fistfights)
· Shallow plots centered on trivial relationships
· A growing emphasis on indecency and breaking social norms
The peak was the massive commercial success of films like Ganj-e Qarun (1965), a copy of Indian melodramas. However, by the early 1970s, the Iranian society began to reject this culture of "distraction" and moral decay that Film Farsi promoted.
The Cold War era starkly revealed cinema's power: it could dismantle cultures or help civilizations rise. While the superpowers wielded it as a strategic weapon, pre-revolutionary Iranian cinema, unfortunately, became a vehicle for cultural alienation and lost identity.
Source: Jewish Studies Center - "The Reign of the Cold War in Iranian and World Cinema"
Author: Dr. Musa Ismailnejad
#ColdWar #IranianCinema #FilmHistory #Hollywood #Propaganda #FilmFarsi #AbiAndRabi #SoftPower #MediaStudies
✅ @rahyafte_en